


Process

by 3dgrace (maximumneptune)



Category: Three Days Grace (Band)
Genre: 2012, Angst, Band Drama, Drama, Grief, Other, Paiiiiiin, Sadness, Self-Isolation, all the good stuff you know, the rating is literally just because of all the swearing lol, there’s a fairly long knife metaphor in here but just to be clear no actual bodily harm takes place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 03:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17480636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximumneptune/pseuds/3dgrace
Summary: After Transit of Venus is finished, Brad has too many questions and no answers.





	Process

**Author's Note:**

> Oof

Brad's world had been shattered just in time for the new year.

Everyone took the news differently. Barry was mainly confused, but you could hear the hurt in his voice whenever he mentioned it. Dani's wounds were shallow, and Brad almost envied him for that. Neil was full of righteous anger, of course. He clutched his drumsticks in one hand as he paced and ranted, as if prepared to stab whoever came into the room next, no matter who it was.

"I can't even fucking believe him!" he growled.

"Can't you," Brad mumbled, slumped over on the couch.

"I don't care if he wants to be a fucking idiot but he could at least have the decency to look us in the eyes before he fucks off to do whatever it is he thinks he's doing!"

"Neil."

"I could understand if he didn't want to tell me but you'd think he'd at least say something to you, eh? And he's not answering his phone! Motherf—"

"NEIL."

Neil trailed off and looked over at Brad.

"Stop." It came out as a tired sigh.

Neil's next fiery words died on his lips. Brad got up and walked out.

Their accommodations for recording Transit of Venus were nice; it had taken everyone a while to decide if they even wanted to book a place to stay while they were recording, but eventually they realized driving back and forth every day would be too much of a hassle and take too much time. The cottage was cozy but large enough for everyone to have breathing room when they needed it. That meant one person per bedroom.

Brad walked into his and shut the door.

With his mind racing faster than the world around him, he collapsed onto his bed to get a good look at the ceiling.

It was so much, so fast, and Brad needed answers, he needed an explanation but he wasn't going to get one how could he do this how could they fix it why would he do this why now why like this why?

Brad took his phone out of his pocket with numb fingers and fumbled around for the pair of headphones on his nightstand without looking. One question stood out among the hundreds swirling around him as he plugged them in and positioned them over his ears.

_What am I going to do?_

With no useful answer to that, Brad opened his iTunes library and hit Play, bracing himself for tears.

_**"She just walked away...why didn't she tell me?"** _

The expected tears didn't come, even as that voice blasted in his ears and he hung on every word. before neil could dash over to his drums from the keybBefore the drums could kick in, he stopped the song, and hit Shuffle on the playlist of all their music instead. The biting intro to Scared replaced Last to Know's forlorn piano.

Brad closed his eyes and let the music drown everything else out for hours, shuffling the playlist again when it ended.

On the third listen-through, he opened his eyes to see that the sun had gone down and his room had grown dim. When he sat up, intending to go to the bathroom, his eyes fell on a plate of food, a fork, and a plastic water bottle that had appeared on top of the oak dresser by the door.

_**"If you can't stand the way this place is, take yourself to higher places!"** _

_Is that what you're doing?_

Brad pushed the headphones off his ears and let them fall onto the bed, then went over to inspect the plate. There was a note on top. He flicked the bedroom light on to read it.

Take whatever time you need. Text me if you need anything or want to talk. -Barry

Brad set the note down on the dresser and took a quick trip to the bathroom in the hallway—he could hear the TV playing quietly in the living room—then returned to mechanically eat some cold stir-fry.

_Why didn't he tell m—us?_

Brad dropped his fork onto the plate and lunged for his phone. Like a man possessed, he opened his texts and scrolled frantically up to a random point. From there, his eyes were glued to the screen, searching every word and every space between for some sort of sign, some sort of indication that he should have picked up on. When he got back to the bottom, to the text he sent like a functioning adult right after he found out and the cold reply, he scrolled further up to check more messages.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. How long had he been such a convincing liar? Or was Brad just blind?

_How long?_

The first answer that came to mind, Brad shoved aside. No, no, he could not entertain that possibility, not now, preferably not ever.

So then how long?

Brad remembered the notebook.

In the drawer of the nightstand there was a notebook, bound with a matte black cover that encompassed the front and back. Shiny, chrome-colored bands ran across the top and bottom. It had been a

"...found this a while ago, and I've been waiting to give it to you—"

Gift.

If it had nevNOT been real...for a while, then what the fuck was that? A lucky guess? Method acting? Was Brad just so predictable that even someone who didn't care at all could pick up on his tastes? Was he so sentimental that anyone could give him anything and he'd take it with him everywhere he traveled?

It was all he could do not to scroll back down to the bottom of his texts and send what he was feeling to the only one who could fix it. His voice, his lyrics looped in Brad's head.

**_"Maybe we'll turn it all around."_ **

How? Brad barely even knew what was happening, let alone how to make it stop happening.

The email. The letter. He had to read it again.

He lost track of how many more times he poured over the cold, emotionless letter. Every word twisted a cruel knife into his chest, and every time he started over from the beginning he pulled it out and let it bury itself in a new spot.

When there was nothing left to cut through, he stopped reading, let whatever fugue state he was in drive him to go brush his teeth—because he sure as hell didn't have the will to consciously make himself do that—and returned to collapse on his bed and fall into a dreamless sleep.

_How could this have happened?_

Brad awoke to a new question and a plate of breakfast. He wanted nothing more than to ignore both and go back to sleep, but no. No, he had to get up, and not only would he eat, he would go out there and eat at the table like a civilized, functioning human being.

He faltered at the door, though.

_I'll go out, but I can't talk to them yet._

On went the headphones, and to the kitchen with his cold food he went.

Dani was sitting at the table writing something down, which of course reminded Brad of the notebook, and the pain from last night returned in full force. Dani looked at him as he sat down. He looked like he wanted to say something, but the headphones did their job.

Brad didn't even realize he was counting the number of people in the house until he was done doing it. One, Two at the table, Three on the couch, Four had just gone down the hall. He could almost pretend Five was just sleeping late. It wasn't hard. It was just a lie.

Maybe the headphones weren't such a great idea because yeah, nobody tried to talk to him about it but also he was feeling slightly underwater and not at all hungry.

Somehow he finished half of the food, dumped everything else in the trash (paper plates, because who wanted to wash dishes?), and retreated back to his room.

He laid down and squeezed his eyes shut, wishing that he could just turn this off, or that he could be like Neil and be angry, something, anything else instead of the maddening, hollow ache in his chest.

"Bastard," he said aloud, just to try it out. The word tasted like plastic.

No, he couldn't—shouldn't?—try to grieve like anyone else.

He snorted at that thought. Grieve? Nobody was dead.

He could be glad about that, right? It could be worse?

If it could be worse than why did it feel like everything around him was collapsing?

Brad took as deep a breath as he could, trying to fill the hollow space inside him, then let out a shuddering sigh.

_How could this have happened?_

The question he woke up to wasn't going away unless he addressed it.

Did it make any sense for things to have gone this way? It was like a puzzle with half the pieces missing and another fourth replaced with pieces of a different puzzle. How was it possible that things had gone so wrong, so quietly, so that everybody was blindsided when the rope finally snapped?

More questions weren't answering the big question, and without consulting the others, he couldn't get the whole story. And he couldn't talk to the others. Not yet.

So instead, Brad set World So Cold to play on repeat and cranked up the volume.

**_"Living in a world so cold, wasting away. Living in a shell with no soul..."_ **

Brad whispered along to "since you've gone away" every time he said it. Had he known that one day Brad would be addressing this song to him?

Suddenly, something gripped Brad that vaporized the ice in his veins. Enough acting like a heartbroken teenage girl! If...if he wanted a song, he would get one!

Brad sat up and stabbed at his screen to pause the music and navigate to something other than Three Days Grace. He was done sulking, listening over and over to songs that were making it worse. He selected a new song to play on repeat.

_**"You left a trail right from the start of bloody nails and broken hearts! And you keep tearing them apart with bloody nails and broken hearts!"** _

With the phone clenched in his hand, Brad was startled to feel scalding tears running down his face. Only when the song ended the first time did he completely break down, sobbing with his hands over his eyes rather than trying to wipe away the tears.

His spark of fury had run out, and all that was left was exhaustion and sorrow.

He had to talk to someone, but he just couldn't go to the others. No, they were too close.

Brad took a shaky breath and dialed. The tone only played a few times, thankfully not giving him more time to feel stupid about this.

"Hey man, what's up?"

"Matt?" Brad said, and the crack in his voice kept him from continuing with whatever it was he was going to say.

"Woah, hey, you alright?"

Matt was more than willing to talk about it, even after Brad asked a million times if he had time/was busy/needed not to have a depressing conversation right now.

"It'll work out, Brad. I mean, now that he's pulled this shit, would you even want him around?"

Yeah.

"I, uh, I guess not. I just—" Brad laughed shakily. "Thanks for talking it out with me, man. Hey, if you get a chance, maybe you could give Neil a call. Talk him out of breaking something, yknow?"

"I gotcha. Take it easy, eh?"

"Yeah."

Brad put the phone down and sighed. God, this was stupid. Just a few days ago he’d been excited to get out and start touring for the new album. Now he was hiding in his room like that would help and there would be no tour because they didn’t have a damn singer.

Of all the times to leave. Right before a tour, and with no prior warning, almost like...

Like he wanted to ruin everything.

And like a stuck door had been opened, Brad knew, and he knew that all along, he had known.

He knew that whatever reason there was for this, only one person had had the choice of how to handle the situation, and for whatever reason—spite, stupidity, some sort of need to push away without the strength to do so?—he had chosen to go about it this way. And if that’s how it was going to be?

Brad closed his eyes and breathed in, feeling the ache in his chest, letting it hurt as much as it needed to.

Twenty years.

He exhaled. It still hurt. Fuck, it hurt a lot, and it probably would for a while. But he knew some other people who were feeling the same way.

But, before he could go talk to them...

Brad opened the nightstand drawer and took out the notebook and a pen that had seen better days.

It was mostly empty, except for the first few pages, and even those weren’t much. A grocery list, a half-finished drawing of what might have been a very lumpy alien, a drawing that James had done that he lodged between two pages (that, he took out and placed on the bed), another grocery list. Brad turned to the first blank page and started to write.

I wish that I knew why you’re doing this. I can only guess, broadly, that you were unhappy. Anything more specific than that is just grasping at straws.

I don’t know why this time was different, or why you didn’t tell any of us beforehand. I could write out a whole list of possible Why’s, and maybe one or a few of them would be on the mark, but I’m not going to. I gave you the option to answer these questions and you wouldn’t take it.

Maybe you know this and maybe you don’t, but of all the ways you could have left, this way is the worst. And whether that was on purpose or because of some bad judgement call, it’s done. You’re gonna be hated for this, and time is running out to fix it.

I’m not asking you to come back. Obviously that isn’t what you want, and I think nothing will ever be the same no matter what you do, but I don’t want it to end like this.

Maybe you do. Maybe you love that we’re reeling. Who am I to say? I obviously never knew you that well in the first place.

But you have to know how many people you’re letting down right now. You might as well let them down gently.

A lifetime ago you suggested I play the bass so we could start a band. Now I'm suggesting that you stop playing with our feelings. Please, Adam. We’ve been doing this for too long to have it all end in a big shitstorm. I want to believe that you’re better than that, but you’re making that pretty fucking difficult.

-brad

Brad read over his work, then nodded a little to himself. That would do. He shut the notebook and tucked it under his arm, then walked out of his room and into the main area of the house.

Neil started a little at his sudden entrance.

“Brad?”

“I’ll be right back. I have some mail to send.”


End file.
